Hellspark (39 page)

(Was I wrong to wake you?) Maggy asked, the smugness gone from her voice.

(No, Maggy. You did just right,) Tocohl told her and couldn’t resist adding, (No lumps.) The smugness returned. “No lumps,” Maggy informed Buntec.

In spectacles, a sprookje, cheek-feathers puffing, seemed to battle with itself, torn between careful handling of its bouquet and direct contact with Edge-of-Dark.

Edge-of-Dark watched it struggle for a moment only, then, with a sweep of her arm, cleared a space on the surface of her table and took a step away, giving enough ground to tell the sprookje she would not attack it. The sprookje’s cheek-feathers settled a little. Settled enough, Tocohl saw, for it laid its bouquet carefully onto the table and stepped hastily back.

The second sprookje did likewise. The third looked at the table, looked at Edge-of-Dark, and, fluffing all its feathers to twice normal size, it stretched out its arms to offer its bouquet directly to

Edge-of-Dark.

Edge-of-Dark inched forward to take the gift, holding the chattering sprays as delicately as the sprookje had.

“Good for you,” said Buntec—it was obviously she who held Maggy’s arachne—and the sprookje echoed her. “How about that,” Buntec went on, sounding twice as pleased, “you may be a pain in the butt, but at least you’re not chicken-shit.”

Buntec’s words and echo seemed to reassure the others as well: each of the remaining sprookjes delivered its burden directly into Edge-of-Dark’s arms, as if the act were a matter of pure course.

Edge-of-Dark, dazed and grinning from behind her armload of sprigs and vines and stalks, began to look like an artistic composition of her own design.

A hand touched Tocohl’s shoulder, her spectacles cleared, and she smiled back at Om im.

“Megeve couldn’t have stopped it,” he said with enormous satisfaction. “He couldn’t have killed enough of us to stop it.”

“So I see.” Tocohl tapped the frame of her spectacles with a fingertip. “But I’d like a closer look.”

The spectacles instantly provided a close-up of Edge-of-Dark. “Thanks but no, Maggy, I mean I’m coming out.”

Om im offered his shoulder for support. As Tocohl got to her feet, layli-layli calulan said, “I

suppose there’s no point in arguing with you?”

“None at all,” Tocohl assured her, “but”—she reacted to the twinge in her side as she straightened—“I will take it easy.”

“I think she means it,” said Om im, lifting a brow at Tocohl in surprise. “That’s less of an argument than we got from Maggy on the subject of waking you.”

“Maggy doesn’t have a pain in her side.” But Tocohl released his shoulder and walked slowly to the

doorway on her own. The pain was there but no longer so bad she would be unable to function.

Om im thrust aside the membrane and bowed her into the sunlight, where she stood, dazzled by the confusion.

The sprookjes had been granted front row center at two separate shows. Edge-of-Dark made art
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of the plants they’d brought her, and beside layli-layli calulan

’s cabin, Dyxte was up to his elbows in the red mud, planting a stand of tick-ticks. Sprookjes gathered around both, paying such rapt attention that their echoing was only haphazard and intermittent.

Around each crowd of sprookjes, small knots of surveyors watched and recorded, trying for all their excitement not to startle or to distract the sprookjes.

In the hush their gestures and their movements shrieked cacophony. Buntec, now holding the arachne at waist-height, grinned from ear to ear, while Hitoshi Dan’s grin began at the tips of his toes, shot his eyebrows up, and ran out his extended arms to spread the fingers of both hands wide. Kejesli shrugged one-handed. Van Zoveel first turned out his thumbs in puzzlement, then shrugged back at Kejesli with a down-turned palm. John the Smith jockeyed for position with Tryn Ilan of Dusty Sunday—who was only trying to find a better camera angle, not assert authority.

Tocohl closed her eyes, made momentarily giddy from the sudden full impact of it all. Her hand reached out, found Om im’s shoulder beneath it.

“Ish shan? Are you all right?”

She opened her eyes. “For a fool, I’m fine.” Grinning down at him, she added, “I know your secret.

And I’ll bet you can’t tell the sprookjes apart right now.”

He obliged her by looking, first at one group, then the second, then up again at her, perplexed.

“You’re right. They all look alike.”

“They’re too interested in Edge-of-Dark and Dyxte to worry about their toes.”

“That’s not much of an explanation.”

“I know. But I’ve got to find Megeve’s sprookje before I can give you a better one.”

He looked again. “I can’t help you.”

Having finished planting his tick-ticks, Dyxte rose and came toward them, trailing his collection of sprookjes. “Good,” he said to Tocohl, warming the perfunctory GalLing’ with a thump of his fist to his heart, “you’re awake. Would you be willing to sacrifice that cloak of yours in a good cause?” His sprookje echoed his request.

“For art’s sake?” Tocohl said. She sighed. “There’s not much left of it, but you’re welcome to the remnants.—Inside.”

He thanked her with a spread palm and slipped past Om im, who turned out two fingers and said, in surprise, “That’s Megeve’s sprookje, Ish shan, but it didn’t echo you!”

“It doesn’t recognize me in all this noise,” she said, adding to herself, at least, I hope that’s the explanation. This would take conscious effort, she saw, and again she released Om im’s shoulder. Taking a step toward the sprookje the Bluesippan had indicated, she told herself, You’re talking to a

Maldeneantine: be polite. “Sunchild?” she asked.

“Sunchild?” said the sprookje, its voice overlapping hers.

“Thank Veschke,” said Tocohl, and the sprookje, ruffling, echoed all the feeling she’d put into the phrase. Without considering the action, she reached out a hand to smooth down the risen feathers.

The sprookje’s head dipped suddenly, beak flashing sharply down toward her hand. Tocohl felt the prick of its “sample tooth.” When it raised its head again, its feathers had already begun to subside, laying back smoothly against the body in long rippling waves. “You just wanted to make sure I was all right,”

she said and was echoed.

(It talked to you!) said Maggy.

(Not yet. So far that’s just echo. Bring the arachne over if you will: I’d like to have as much tape on this as possible.)

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“Now how did you do that?” Om im said. Then, in a tone of admiration, “Never mind. Don’t tell me.

It’d be like asking a magician where the doves came from. Go on,” he urged, “I’ll just stand here and appreciate the results.”

“Don’t go overboard,” Tocohl and Sunchild said, “I haven’t got anything yet—except a damn echo

I could well do without.”

Om im laughed. “You’re never satisfied. First you’re unhappy that it won’t talk, now you’re unhappy because it will.”

She eyed him wickedly. “Let’s try a second experiment, shall we?” Sunchild agreed vocally.

“Let’s see what happens when I go from Maldeneantine”—and here she shifted stance and position—“to

Bluesippan… and keep on talking.”

For the first time, she heard a catch of hesitation in the sprookje’s echo—just at the moment she shifted from accommodating a speaker of Maldeneantine to a speaker of Bluesippan. “Now,”

she and sprookje said together, “go ahead. Say something, Om im, I dare you.”

“Dare me…” he began, completely puzzled. Then his mouth snapped shut as he realized Sunchild had echoed him as well. “By my blade,” the two of them said together, “what have you done to me?”

“Not me,” Tocohl assured him, reassured to find the sprookje still echoing her as well,

“Sunchild.”

She grinned at the sprookje, feeling as ruffled in her excitement as Sunchild so obviously was.

“You catch on quick,” they said, as if to each other.

Dyxte, trailing the moss cloak, paused on the threshold to look down at them. “It talks to you!”

Sunchild did not echo him. Tocohl frowned at the sprookje, waited until Dyxte had reached the bottom step, and shifted into ti-Tobian. Sunchild’s eyes widened. “Yes,” said Tocohl as Sunchild and a second sprookje—Dyxte’s—both echoed her, “but you see how complicated this echo business can get.”

“You’ve got two echoing you now!” Dyxte said, then threw a protective arm across his face at the realization that the same two had echoed him as well. “Oh, no!”

Om im glanced up at her, clearly wondering what would happen if he spoke. With the touch of a finger to the tip of her nose, she urged him to try. “Testing,” he said cautiously, “one, two…”

The same two sprookjes echoed him. “Now you’ve really done it, Ish shan,” all three said accusingly.

“I’m afraid so,” Tocohl admitted. Behind her a chorus of sprookjes sounded the same regret.

“Let’s see if we can get Sunchild inside”—she winced at the amount of echo as another sprookje joined the chorus—“where I’ll have only one to deal with.”

Dyxte, with a wild look at her, bundled the cloak under his arm and made for layli-layli calulan

’s cabin. Two of the sprookjes hesitated only a moment before following him. Sunchild remained, still staring solemnly.

It turned at the arrival of Buntec, Maggy’s arachne, and van Zoveel and its eyes widened.

“Veschke’s sparks,” said Tocohl, seeing the look—attention drawn back, the sprookje echoed her—“I

wish you wouldn’t!”

“It’s true!” said van Zoveel. “It echoes you!”

To her relief, it didn’t echo van Zoveel. “Inside,” she said and Sunchild seconded that.

Buntec set the arachne on the infirmary’s bottom step, where it immediately skittered up to the door and rocked impatiently. “Lumps,” said Buntec, clenching a fist in its direction, “you’re
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about to learn the literal meaning of lumps.”

The arachne stopped its rocking instantly and bobbed deferentially. “Your pardon, Buntec,”

Maggy began.

“Don’t worry about it. Just don’t do it. It drives me up a wall.”

Maggy lowered the arachne a fraction of an inch, just enough to appear greatly interested, and said, “Really?”

Buntec rolled her eyes at Tocohl, sighed, and said, “Kids.” She climbed the steps and held the door, toeing the arachne inside. Tocohl made the various shooing motions that gestured first Bluesippan, then

Zoveelian in.

Then she took a deep breath and, hoping Sunchild would remember, held out to the sprookje an imaginary length of moss cloak. The sprookje came forward, took the imaginary end, and followed her to the threshold.

There it stood, feathers ruffling. Om im said, “This isn’t a daisy-clipper, Sunchild. By my blade, I swear it won’t crash.” Echoing his words, Sunchild entered the infirmary.

“It echoed you too!” van Zoveel said. “How… !

How

… ?” He rocked impatiently at her side.

“Lumps?” said Maggy, directing her query to Buntec.

“Probably,” said Buntec, with a glare at van Zoveel, “in about three minutes if he doesn’t cut it out.

I’ve warned him about it…”

As if fascinated, the arachne trotted a yard or so away, the better to get a full-figure view of van Zoveel and Buntec. The movement drew a surprised glance from van Zoveel. “She’s waiting for me to deck you,” Buntec explained. “She wants to record it for her files.”

Van Zoveel stopped his rocking abruptly. With visible effort, he held his body still, but the ribbons on his tunic still fluttered his excitement. “Tocohl,” he began.

“No lumps?” Maggy sounded disappointed, and knowing how unusual it was for her to interrupt, Tocohl decided that was an indication of how disappointed.

“Some other time,” Buntec said, “I’m sure.”

That was enough to satisfy Maggy. To satisfy van Zoveel would not be so easy. She stood quietly for a long moment, then she turned and greeted him, with Sunchild repeating each word, in Zoveelian: “May the sun warm you in the cold wind.”

Ruurd van Zoveel responded automatically: “May the wind cool you in the hot sun.” This time the sprookje echoed him.

With a whoop of delight, Buntec clapped van Zoveel on the shoulder. “Now you’ve got two, Ruurd!” In her burst of enthusiasm, she added, “Make it do me, Tocohl.”

Tocohl grinned. “Are you sure?” The sprookje echoed her. “It’s more trouble than it’s worth.”

But Buntec was caught by the enthusiasm of the moment. “I don’t mind! Do it!” she said, clapping her hands together in her excitement, so Tocohl grinned again and, shifting her stance, mimicked the gesture. “Now talk,” Tocohl and the sprookje invited.

“Hiya, Sunchild!” Buntec said, and when Sunchild repeated her words, she clapped van Zoveel on the shoulder a second time, crowing her delight.

Perhaps, thought Tocohl, overkill is the way to go. A moment later she had the sprookje echoing both layli-layli calulan and swift-Kalat as well.

Maggy rocked the arachne. “Me, too. Make it do me, too!” but before she had completed the sentence, Sunchild had joined in as well. Maggy stopped the rocking, as if in surprise. “What did I do?”

she and her echo asked.

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“You just proved,” Tocohl said, with Sunchild picking her up, “that you’re definitely Hellspark.”

In the momentary clamor of voices that followed, Sunchild tried valiantly to echo them all, even as they interrupted and overlapped each other’s words. But it could manage only a phrase here and a phrase there, and its feathers began to fluff in its distress.

“That echo,” Tocohl announced—so loudly that it was her voice the sprookje followed—“has got to go.”

Silence ensued as Tocohl considered the sprookje. “All right,” they said together, “everyone keep quiet for a moment.” Tocohl stroked the feathers at Sunchild’s wrist until they subsided.

Then, keeping a careful eye on them for any renewed sign of alarm, she slowly raised both hands to the level of its head.